Artful Transformation

Moore statue, more offerings

Installing a Henry Moore sculpture outside the Art Museum
Jane Haley

On Rugby Road, a large Henry Moore statue dominates the entrance to the UVA Art Museum where overgrown shrubbery once stood.

The new outdoor sculpture garden is part of a facelift of the museum’s historic landscape setting, designed in 1929 by former architecture dean Edmund S. Campbell. The arrival of “Seated Woman, 1958-59” (on indefinite loan from the Henry Moore Foundation) also signals changes within.

In February, museum director Bruce Boucher announced new programmatic initiatives, both on-site and digital, to expand public access to its holdings. The Online Collection, available at the museum’s website (virginia.edu/artmuseum), allows visitors to retrieve more than 1,000 images and accompanying catalog information for browsing, research or teaching. Curators have selected major works from the museum’s 13,000-object collection, and continue to add new images and records. The Object Study Gallery, on the museum’s second floor, showcases about 140 items in an open storage design. Highlights of this installation, also accessible online, include a 15th-century Hungarian processional crucifix, a Chinese Tang Dynasty ceramic horse, plus ancient coins, masks and bark paintings.